I get tired of seeing people acting like Iverson was all alone dragging scrubs with him. Dikembe Mutombo was not some scrub. The Sixers don't get to the Finals without him, and no amount of revisionist history will change that fact.

In Game 1, Mutombo had 15 points, 18 rebounds—7 offensive, and four blocked shots in a 93-85 win. “He kept the Sixers in the game when his teammate Allen Iverson was struggling [13-for-35]” (New York Times, May 24, 2001).

In Game 4, Mutombo “dominated the paint” with 17 points, 15 rebounds and four blocked shots in a 89-83 win (Reading Eagle, May 28, 2001).

In Game 5, Mutombo had 21 points on 6-for-11 shooting from the floor and 9 of 9 shooting from the line and 13 rebounds to help Philadelphia overcome a 5-for-27 shooting night from Allen Iverson and lead the 76ers to an 89-88 win and 3-2 series lead. “With Allen Iverson struggling and scoring only 15 points, it was Dikembe Mutombo who stepped up” (USA Today, May 31, 2001).

In Game 7, Mutombo had 23 points, 19 rebounds and seven blocked shots as the Sixers won 108-91 to advance to the Finals, and Iverson finally had an efficient scoring game, scoring 44 on 17-33 FG, 61.0% TS.

Larry Brown: “He (Mutombo) was a monster tonight. He was a monster in all of the series” (New York Times, Jun 4, 2001).

Tyrone Hill:“He (Mutombo) took us to another level” (New York Times, Jun 4, 2001).

They're not describing some scrub who was just there for the ride. Iverson strikes a chord in some people as a nice story of "an undersized guy with heart," and they revise history to bolster this narrative. "Undersized guy with heart single-handedly carries a bunch of scrubs to the Finals" makes for a nice story. But that story's complete fiction.

Quote:

PHILADELPHIA — The way Dikembe Mutombo figured it, Milwaukee coach George Karl was trying to get into his head.

The way it turned out, all Karl got into was trouble.

Back in February, just after the Philadelphia 76ers traded Theo Ratlff and Toni Kukoc—among others—to Atlanta to bring the 7-2 Mutombo north, Karl said that Mutombo would be “irrelevant” and “not a factor” against Milwaukee. Karl’s rationale: Milwaukee was a perimeter-oriented team, and Mutombo was an inside-only player.

But from Game 1, which Mutombo dominated, through Sunday’s Game 7 Sixers win, Mutombo battered the Bucks.

The Big Man scored 23 points, pulled down 19 rebounds and blocked seven shots to help lead the Sixers to a 108-91 win and into the NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. For the series, Mr. Irrelevant averaged 16.6 points, 15.6 rebounds and 2.7 blocked shots.

Mutombo registered a double-double (points-rebounds) in each of the series’ seven games.

But the man teammates call Deke was more than happy to talk about Karl’s unintended motivational push.

“I think he was scared to see the ghost of ’95 back,” Mutombo said, referring to the first-round series six years ago in which his eighth-seeded Denver Nuggets upset Karl’s top-seeded Seattle SuperSonics. “I think he saw it again, and I think that’s why he tried to get inside of my mind. I think that he forgot what I did to him (when Karl was) in Seattle.

“Dikembe,” said Sixers forward Tyrone Hill, “was just a dominating presence throughout this series.”

That's what actually happened. He wasn't some nobody who had to be carried. Iverson wasn't doing anything "single-handedly."

Iverson doesn't get to the Finals in '01 without Mutombo. Period. Mutombo flat out carried him in two of their four wins while Iverson was shooting 29% (18-for-62). They don't win without his 6.4 offensive rebounds a game while Iverson was shooting 34% for the series. He averaged 30.5 points on 31 shots. And he's a volume scorer, so that matters. Iverson didn't play like an MVP until the final game of that series. Which was the first time since Game 6 of the second round that he shot >50%. (It's odd that I see FG% and TS% levied against some players, but for some reason volume scorers are exempt, even though since their main contribution is scoring a lot of points, that matters even more.)

It's like people don't know anything about the game that doesn't involve scoring a lot of points. They can't see any other aspect of the game. They're literally incapable of seeing any contribution that doesn't involve scoring a lot of points. (Whatever the arbitrary amount of points they find acceptable is.)

And another problem I have is that after the years go by, people say things that didn't happen and then the people who weren't there get the wrong impression. I've seen this on many message boards, where the people didn't have any knowledge of what happened in order to be able to know when misinformation was being spread. People can't just stick to what happened, they always have to embellish something to suit their agenda.